Clone a Template in the vSphere Client

Prerequisites

You must be connected to vCenter Server to clone a template. You cannot create templates if you connect directly to an ESXi host.

Procedure

Right-click the template and select Clone.

Give the new template a unique name and description and click Next.

Select the host or cluster and click Next.

Select a datastore for the template and click Next.

Specify in which format to store the template’s virtual disks.

Option

Action

Same format as source

Use the same format as the source virtual machine.

Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed

Create a virtual disk in a default thick format. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated during creation. Any data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on demand at a later time on first write from the virtual machine.

Thick Provision Eager Zeroed

Create a thick disk that supports clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. Space required for the virtual disk is allocated at creation time. In contrast to the thick provision lazy zeroed format, the data remaining on the physical device is zeroed out during creation. It might take longer to create disks in this format than to create other types of disks.

Thin Provision

Use the thin provisioned format. At first, a thin provisioned disk uses only as much datastore space as the disk initially needs. If the thin disk needs more space later, it can grow to the maximum capacity allocated to it.

Click Next.

Review the information for the template and click Finish.

You cannot use the new template until the cloning task completes.

vCenter Server adds the cloned template to the list in the Virtual Machines tab.